The Nats lost in the playoffs to the Cubs, but I felt better when the Cubs lost to the Dodgers. I started pulling for the Dodgers, and here’s why:

The Dodgers have better-looking uniforms. And seriously, Cubs—orange on your uniforms? Unless you play for the Tennessee football team and have a Big Orange tradition(and you don’t), orange doesn’t belong on a baseball uniform. Too bad the championship wasn’t decided by the color schemes. It wouldn’t take seven games to figure that one out.

The Dodgers have a longer tradition, going back to 1883 and the days in Brooklyn when they were called the Trolley Dodgers for people on their way to games dodging mass transit. The Astros were established in 1962, and changed their name from the Colt .45’s in 1965. They even changed their team from the American League and their division within that league. It’s hard for a team to have a tradition when they change their league, division and name.

Because the Dodgers have a longer history, they have more famous players, players like Mike Piazza, Steve Garvey, Orel Hershiser, Gil Hodges, Fernando Valenzuela, Maury Wills, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Don Drysdale, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, and Sandy Koufax. The Astros—well, the only famous player I’ve heard of is Roger Clemens, and that’s it. They don’t have enough of a history to have any more.

So, the Dodgers might have lost the battle, but they won the war. They’ll be first in my heart for a while—until those pitchers and catchers for the Nationals report next spring. Go, Nats!